Entries in Big Love
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Isabella Vosmikova/HBO(LOS ANGELES) -- Series finales are always a big gamble. After five seasons, HBO's polygamy series Big Love went off the air Sunday night with a bang and the requisite reactions have been fast and furious. It was not on the scale of the controversial Sopranos series-ender but it was bold and it was absolutely final.

Series star Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton) dies. He gets shot by a neighbor who resents him for resodding his lawn without asking -- an act of charity that brought deeper resentment the neighbor held to the surface: "I wonder if you think I can't do that for myself? If you think I'm unworthy or inadequate? I can't take care of my wife?" As Henrickson's three wives in the kitchen prepared an Easter feast, two shots rang out, and with that the polygamist who staunchly defended "the principle," and seemed to believe he was becoming a prophet, was dead.

In the end, Henrickson's conviction on plural marriage left viewers as confused and conflicted as the show itself.